9th Day of Giving: Angel Flight West

Since 1983 a group of pilots based at the Santa Monica Airport have been volunteering their time, skills and airplanes to transport patients who need to get to treatment, but can’t afford to pay airfare. This group became what is now called Angel Flight West and they have flown over 22,000 missions.

Angel Flight missions include carrying cancer patients for chemotherapy, surgery or other treatment, between their home and the treatment facility; carrying people with kidney problems to obtain dialysis or kidney transplants; carrying patients with heart problems for specialized diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up; and transporting children to and from “special needs camps” such as camps for burn survivors, camps for children with renal disease and camps for children with life-threatening illnesses. Angel Flight also responds to many other compelling human needs for which free air transportation would be of value.

Are you a pilot? Here is a great way to combine your love of flying with a way to help others in need. Check out the pilot requirements page to determine if you qualify. Angel Flight has other non-pilot volunteer opportunities as well to help with pilot recruitment, outreach, mission coordination and to act as mission assistants. You can donate money as well.

One Reply to “9th Day of Giving: Angel Flight West”

Results from this year’s gotluck were distributed today on corner of 5th near the Fred Jordan Mission. Car hood kitchen (this year we rolled in style in a 2000 accord my boardmember drove, no more 91 camry nonsense)distributed: tons of ham, tortilla chips, trail mix, polly seeds, ham bones, bread, cookies, soda, and a few other goodies in bulk I forgot about. At least 3-4 dozen people served by myself, a boardmember of our nonprofit, my little sis, and a cousin going to college in Portland who got a sobering dose of how we gets down in LA.

Literal “hamdemonium” was achieved, although there was little fighting or pushing like previous years past. We preceded to give out blankets and clothes to those trying out our food, and placed the leftover baby clothes and goods at bus stops heading towards south LA on Broadway and Main. So far we have managed to save about 4 carloads of clothes and crap from consumptive chicano wasteland (my abuela’s garage), and give them good use sanctuary with people who will use them. Since we noticed an upitck on poor latino church impromptu food kitchens, we opted to do our giving at a less popular time after the holidays to add some late cheer.

From my analysis Skid row seems much cleaner and less Calcutta-esque, but there was plenty of folks there. A lot less permanent encampments, a lot less white folks and drug dealery folks (who seem to be moving to the outskirts of the skid); a lot more downtrodden and quieter mentally ill people, an uptick in Latinos (the ex-choloish basehead crowd and a few really bad off paisanos who were mostly older) and grateful niceold black men who kind of kept the line in check and were allowing those in more need to get in front of them. Darn I wish I had some special bag of goodies for those nice black guys, they rocked and were greatful to scrape the ham residue off the aluminum pam.

We initially tried to enter the fred jordan center to give the leftover baby clothes, and I can confirm the entrance and front courtyard are the most dysfunctionally designed unsafe areas in the nation. My cousin from Portland was also harassed a bit by a molesty guy who looked like a cross between flava flav and ET, he kept asking her if her lip ring was silver and then began calling her silver; he gave off a a vibe of a black version of the old perv in family guy. It was overall safe (although still crazy as f%ck down there, I had less of a lawlessness feeling), I did not have to take off the shirt to flex my tattoos for hood/dont mess with us credibility, and the ever present weed smoke literally filled the air. I swear i must put someone in the mood to burn one within 5 feet of me with all the festive giving, it happens every time, or maybe that’s just skid row. hard to decipher.